Tag: Pagan

In political philosophy “pluralism” refers to agnosticism about an ultimate good or ideal way of life. Political pluralism supports an open society where multiple cultures can form communities and cooperate on shared interests. Without pluralism communities would fracture across differences and could not tolerate even simple disagreements about value. As such, pluralism enables large and diverse communities that can benefit from an array of strengths and perspectives.

In a theology “pluralism” refers to neutrality among different concepts of the divine. Theological pluralism admits that humanity can only have incomplete knowledge of the divine either because of humanity’s limited capacity or the divine’s inherent complexity. Contemporary Paganism embraces theological pluralism in the absence of a unifying systematic doctrine. Pluralism has allowed contemporary Paganism to form communities united primarily by methods and practices rather than by a shared concept of the divine.

These approaches represent different senses of “pluralism.” Political pluralism allows multiple valid frameworks for defining the good life but also provides boundaries for acceptable frameworks. Only ways of life that are compatible with disagreement and alternative values can be admitted to a functional and peaceful pluralist community. Views of the good life that demand conformity from others irrespective of their beliefs or consent introduce fundamental conflict into the community. One might consider this form of pluralism “strong pluralism” because it provides some structure and boundaries that protect the continued coexistence of different views.

The religious pluralism that shows up in the Neo-Pagan community lacks a comparable organizing character. Instead, Pagan theological pluralism enables community in the absence of wide agreement or shared experience. The contemporary Pagan revival enjoys a diversity of fraudulent claims of tradition that stretches back to its origin with Gerald Gardner’s publication of Witchcraft Today. The community that developed around theatrical personalities, flawed scholarship, and escapist imagination preferred unity to fragmentation, so substantial discourse on theology, metaphysics, and morality cannot rise beyond sharing beliefs and experiences and evaluate those beliefs critically. Without any protective boundary confidence artists and abusive personalities prey on people seeking spiritual experiences or knowledge, and the community at large can do little more than warn and condemn at a distance. Neo-Pagans have no way of identifying a shared value that cannot be diminished by appeal to personal insight.

Traditions that embrace the mystical experience tend to formalize a stronger pluralism. Teaching lineages in Buddhism protect against harmful divergence from the philosophical heart of the tradition. While not a perfect preventative, lineage holders can censure or disown harmful teachers who borrow credibility from the tradition in order to exploit or abuse others. Zen Buddhism in particular stresses continued examination and criticism of insight from both intellection and mysticism, often with the assistance of a more experienced teacher who can direct the student back to fundamental prinicple.

Using such a model Paganism could have a stronger community with boundaries that do not enable predators. Lineages of initiation that value cultivating insight critically provide the means to diminish abuse of personal gnosis for personal gain or domination. Strong pluralism does not require dogma, only boundaries and the means to maintain them.

A living culture adapts to the changing needs of its people. Syncretism and fragmentation occur organically wherever communities meet and part ways over time. Imperialism and colonization add a dimension of political and economic inequality to these interactions. A colonizer culture expands in order to plunder material resources. They maintain power by plundering cultural resources and forcibly exporting their own culture. Assimilation becomes a survival strategy for the colonized, and the colonizers reap the value of cultural icons of interest to their own people.

New Age spirituality often reproduces these dynamics. Religious icons, philosophical texts, and traditional clothing are manufactured and sold by colonizers to colonizers, exploiting the labor as well as the culture of the colonized. Literary and philosophical traditions are filtered through teachers like Helena Blavatsky who adopted an “Orientalist” aesthetic to make her spiritual system more exotic and mysterious. As concepts are lost in translation, the colonizer recipients are unable to learn and practice with respect even if they are interested in doing more than bathing in an aesthetic of “exotic” well-being.

Cultural appropriation includes two ethically compromised behaviors. Individuals in colonizer cultures perform cultural appropriation by adopting artifacts of a colonized culture as ornaments divorced from their original context and significance. Cultural appropriation continues when colonizers capitalize on that ornamentation by controlling the production and trade of exported artifacts, often exploiting the labor of colonized people to do so. The latter instance replicates the immoral exploitation of the working class by the owner class, but the former instance robs colonized people of equality and mutual respect.

Colonizers elevate the artifacts that they value but not the people who created them. Cultural appropriation reduces the value of the colonized by making it subject to the pleasures of the colonizers. Mutual respect requires understanding one another as equals, each holding intrinsic value and protected status as moral agents. Looting the material, intellectual, and philosophical culture of a people places colonization at the center of any interaction between individuals from the respective cultures. Culture then become another axis of identity that owners can use to divide the working class and prevent organization against the owner class who drive colonization and exploitation.

As discussed elsewhere some traditions place value on openness to converts and synthesis with complementary features of other traditions. Absent power dynamics, missionary traditions can form bridges between peoples and support adaptation to change. Cultural appropriation remains a risk with missionary traditions when historical and current power asymmetries poisoned peer relationships, but missionary traditions generally maintain a path for proper initiation under the right circumstances. When approaching with respect new members can join and found new branches of the tradition as interpreted through a new cultural lens.

While spirituality may be framed in terms of sentiment and feeling, philosophy often plays a crucial role in defining a tradition. The demand for unquestioning faith rarely appears outside of fringe movements. Most traditions offer an account of divinity, the universe, morality, and how one arrives at knowledge of those things. Reflection on mysteries and paradoxes abound but do not crowd out rationality. In some cases critical analysis serves as a requirement for faith as it requires one to engage fully with texts and concepts.

Through honest and respectful study, scholars may find ethically sound paths into missionary and even closed traditions. Nevertheless, study alone does not avoid the moral concerns of cultural appropriation. One can be a sincere scholar and still participate in colonizer networks of exploited value, and in practice a scholar might not have much agency over that participation. Buying “public domain” texts translated recently enough to copyright may indirectly feed a colonizer-owned publishing or distribution company. Decorating one’s academic office with sacred figures reproduced by the labor of the colonized and sold by the colonizer would constitute more direct participation.

Access and entry into a tradition is defined by the tradition and its lineage-holders. To approach with demands and expectations is to approach with the attitude of a colonizer. If one feels a sincere attraction toward a tradition, one should engage in respectful study in order to understand the tradition, its history, and its boundaries. Irrespective of the specific tradition, one should approach with humility and be open to honest wonder as well as critical discomfort. Colonization has spoiled much potential for organic conversation and synthesis, so we must heal those rifts by forsaking colonizer attitudes, approaching as aspirants rather than novitiates.

Navigating the ethical pitfalls of cultural appropriation requires approaching a tradition with respect and taking only what is freely given. When a tradition offers its deep philosophy, some who study it may find themselves persuaded by the arguments. The intellectual relationship with a tradition contrasts with shallow adoption of practices or rote repetition of summarized beliefs. Mimicry of outward appearance without understanding the underlying substance allows colonizers to redirect value from the colonized. Engagement with the fundamental premises requires deep understanding, humility, and respect.

European occult traditions often look backward in time for the keys to mystery. The ancient masters encoded secret knowledge for later discovery according to Theosophists and Hermetic magicians. Wicca merely revives the oldest religion according to Gardnerian witches. Whether one understands these claims as literal or metaphorical, they demonstrate a past-oriented attitude and aesthetic that shapes contemporary traditions and their values. The language of kings, queens, domains, and subjects enters ritual forms to frame the role of the High Priest and Priestess or the relationship between gods and humanity.

While royal imagery complements a pastoral aesthetic often associated with modern Paganism, it also calls forth class divides between a privileged elite and the common masses. The atavistic aesthetic may influence the perception of modern Paganism as exclusionary to communities of color, being rooted both in European mysticism and colonizer hierarchies. The regressive tendencies show up differently across modern Pagan traditions, but they are quite evident even in Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca. Even without emphasizing monarchial hierarchies, the cultural models typically applied to “Norse” and “Celtic” traditions still assume a stratified society, divided into warrior-druid-bard heroes and common artisans and farmers.

Framing modern Wicca as a revival of “the Old Religion” establishes a relationship to tradition usually associated with conservative politics. Conservative politics forms a contemporary cult of tradition, hewing to values of an imagined, idealized past that imposes duties of continuation on the present. A “traditional” approach to value reinforces historic injustice such as narrowly defined gender roles and resistance to gender identity and relationship styles that escape narrow confines.

Gardner identifies a focus on returning to nature as one of the essential elements of his witchcraft tradition. The values associated with this element of Gardnerian Wicca embrace a pastoral aesthetic. As an artistic movement, pastoralism frames the desire for simplicity and natural settings as a desire for a traditional life of clearly defined roles such as shepherd, wife, and king. Injunctions against the evils of technology and the modern world appear in Gardner’s writing, often alongside paeans to monarchy and a just, benevolent aristocracy.

While American Paganism contains strains of progressive politics, the duo-theist framework of the Wiccan Goddess and God expand rigid gender roles across polytheist pantheons. When any goddess is reducible to an abstract “Goddess” and every god is reducible to an abstract “God,” divine attributes are subsumed by attributes assigned as masculine and feminine. In addition to ignoring nonbinary gender identity and the transgender experience, the duo-theist framework aligns with culturally defined gender roles, the domain of tradition. In response to internal advocacy, contemporary Pagan traditions have begun to integrate more inclusive approaches to the God and Goddess of Wicca, but the oversight can be attributable to a framework internal to the tradition, not merely one shared by the broader culture.

Fortunately for the progressive, modern Paganism cannot be entirely reduced to its atavistic features. One must bring a critical lens to practice, tradition, and myth, but in so doing one begins a highly rewarding engagement with the path. Through the deconstruction of gender archetypes, political power, and social relationships, a modern Pagan can renew their tradition, affirming it as a dynamic and adaptive context rather than one merely recorded in a history book. When one establishes a coven as a peer community situated in an intersection of identities and related communities, witchcraft steps into the context of life as we live it today.

Racist tendencies that arise in conjunction with heritage-based traditions can be combated with the same critical lens. While only some lineages assert “heritage” as a gatekeeping measure, the dominant strains of “Celtic” and “Norse” Paganism alongside British Traditional Witchcraft have influenced the dominating whiteness of Pagan communities. Nevertheless, a white person investigating their heritage critically is invited to understand a “Celtic” or “Norse” identity and to recognize the very recent creation of white identity that subsumes other identities. Knowledge of pre-Christian people of Northern and Northwestern Europe remains limited because Roman expansion erased or consumed many traces of those cultures, laying the groundwork for a homogenization that Christianity would complete. In other words white people get an opportunity to recognize that imperialism took an identity from them as well, disrupting a continuity they had previously taken only from whiteness.

Pagans of non-English European heritage living in North America should investigate their ancestry to learn about the excluding and plastic nature of whiteness. To understand that French, Irish, German, and Polish people were deemed apart from the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream and oppressed accordingly is to understand the auto-colonization of European peoples by whiteness. A white Pagan should learn these lessons to build empathy with disadvantaged identity groups as we find them in our current context, to recognize the privilege foisted upon them by the erasure of their ancestry, and to find common cause in remedying systemic social injustice.

Philosopher Tim van Gelder argues that metaphors for the mind reflect popular technological paradigms. During the latter 20th century, computing metaphors dominate philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Functionalist explanations of the mental states mirror the binary logic of Alan Turing’s machines. Sigmund Freud’s analysis of subconscious influence on speech and action resembles the need to relieve excess pressure in a steam engine. While technological models assist in reasoning about more abstract phenomena, the phenomenon remains logically prior to the model. One should be careful when drawing conclusions from the framing metaphor since the metaphor need not conform perfectly to serve as an explanatory device.

Modern witchcraft and New Age lore often focus on an undefined “energy” that can be gathered, directed, and released in service of operational magic. Descriptions of energy work often recall the dynamics of electric current. For instance, excess energy requires “grounding” when a ritual is complete or else the discharge may be dangerous. Beyond these phenomenological descriptions, the energy remains undefined.

In Yoga traditions control over breathing assists with directing focus and developing meditative concentration. The word for breath, “prana,” indicates both the physical breath and a more subtle current that carries vitality through the body. Traditional Chinese Medicine recognizes a similar concept designated with the word for breath, “qi.” The similarity should be unsurprising since the Silk Road connects these traditions, and they compare well with New Age “energy” due to its appropriation from those cultures. These concepts reference an observable phenomenon to anchor imagination of a subtle phenomenon.

While metaphors are useful for making the abstract concrete, conclusions cannot reliably follow from the metaphor alone. Breath and electricity behave according to observable physical principles, but one cannot infer the behavior of a more subtle “energy” from the behavior of electricity. Imagining the breath as a flow of electric current can stabilize and focus awareness, but these metaphors describe an experience using imagery. They are not sensory descriptions of a magical power.

Setting aside the metaphors, all of these models do seem to refer to the same phenomenon. During meditation one can settle into a feeling of expanded awareness where the immediate sensory environment transforms into something “inside” the mind rather than “outside” the body. The expanded awareness can be focused on specific sensations to unpack the arising, presenting, and passing of sense experience. The flow of breath or electricity can be used to describe intentional direction and focus of the expanded awareness. Chaos magicians describe reaching a state like this one when directing intention toward a sigil, training one’s awareness to the sigil and the outcome it encodes.

While one should not rely on this technique to spin straw into gold, expanded awareness is foundational for the cultivation of mindfulness in both Buddhism and Yoga. Being able to release passing tensions and focus on the task at hand can make a mundane task soothing. Gathering resolve through expanded awareness shines light on habits we want to break. The metaphors should help us achieve the state of consciousness by giving us a mental map, a technique for cultivating it. They do not need to convey metaphysical or ontological facts about the world to serve this function, so inference from the model should be limited to practical application.

Daily meditation anchors a spiritual practice irrespective of one’s tradition. Reserving time to cultivate calm, focused awareness provides space to release tension, investigate emotions, and observe the passing of thought and sensation. Mindfulness contributes to living skillfully as well as the practice of witchcraft and ceremonial magic. Cultivating mindfulness of the body, mind, and emotions enables one to choose their reactions rather than be driven by impulses and habits. A daily habit teaches the discipline needed prepare rituals, practice regular devotions, and observe celestial cycles. By taking time to sit still and observe, one learns to recognize their inner voice and distinguish mystical insight from self-deception.

Pagan traditions reconstructed from pre-Christian Europe lack any instructions in developing focused awareness. In fairness, the traditions of Celtic and Germanic pagans are largely lost, with no trace whatsover of daily observances. On the other hand, practices that train concentration, choiceless awareness, and visualization appear in later European occult traditions such as Rosicrucianism, and Christian asceticism embraces devoted and solitary contemplation exemplified by the anchorites. Theosophy introduced meditation practices appropriated from Buddhist and Yogic traditions, but Theosophy, and the New Age movement that replaces it today, distorted those traditions heavily to capitalize on colonialist fascination with “the exotic.” If a contemporary Pagan wants to develop a meditation practice not informed by Christianity or cultural appropriation, they have few options.

Buddhist traditions contain many forms of meditation, but the form given in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta serves as the foundation for many of them. The Buddha and those who hold his lineage saw value in teaching meditation alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. As a missionary tradition, Buddhists have been active in spreading the Dharma and its practices. While one can be born into a family of Buddhists, one may declare themselves a Buddhist by taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. While some Buddhist lineages have deep ties to their home region or maintain elements of a mystery tradition, many Buddhist lineages have freely offered instruction in meditation. The Zen tradition in particular arises in China, the result of Buddhist missionary travel from India, and spreads from there to Korea and Japan. As such, Buddhism offers the means and instruction for anyone who wants to develop a regular meditation practice, even Pagans.

The absence of a mystical tradition deprives Paganism of more than techniques. Traditions that include meditation also incorporate practical insights into their metaphysics, epistemology, and theology. Rich models of consciousness and lucid phenomenology originate in the wisdom derived from the experience of meditation. Buddhist sutras contain descriptions of successive stages of realization leading from initial concentration to deep investigation of experience. Literature on the cultivation of elevated states helps deepen one’s practice by providing techniques and analytic frameworks. While we all must walk our path, our way is easier when we can follow the tracks of those who have gone before.

 

In The Meaning of Witchcraft Gerald Gardner offers a historical narrative constructed from select facts arranged in a web of interpretation woven by Margaret Murray. Despite being initiated by a coven whose lineage stretched back to pre-Christian Britain, Gardner does not relate a history handed down through that tradition. His claims largely rest of the fact of the coven’s existence as demonstrations that his narrative enjoys support from both Murray’s folklore scholarship and direct evidence.

Gardner begins the witchcraft story in prehistoric Old Stone Age spirituality as interpreted from cave drawings in Europe. Hunting tactics accompanied by superstitions connected to success eventually yield formalized ritual and an individual specializing in the ritual performance. As needs transitioned from hunting to herding to farming, the ritual specialists transitions from shaman to priest to witch. Witchcraft is then humanity’s oldest religion and magical practice, stemming from a time in without that distinction.

While Gardner then frames adherents to Old Religion as holdouts against Christian conversion and eventual victims of “the Burning Times,” his account of what a witch does and why they do it remains rooted in this primitivist framework. As such Gardnerian Wicca anchors itself in times much older than Celtic or Germanic pagan cultures that give form to some traditions of modern witchcraft. The gods of Angles, the Saxons, and the Britons feature only as expressions of the primordial god and goddess. Gardner gives witchcraft an anthropological narrative rather than a strictly historical one.

An anthropological turn places witchcraft closer to an area of expertise in which Gardner can boast authentic credentials. During his colonial service, Gardner had extensive contact with tribal peoples in Southeast Asia and wrote some of the first reports on their traditions and legends about weaponry. Although he had no formal training, Gardner’s work was well received by the scholarly community. His interest in both weapons and superstitions about weapons likely brought Gardner a number of stories about magic, hunting, and ritual. Wicca’s embrace of animism, karma, and reincarnation all reflect a distillation of the cultures where Gardner spent his time abroad.

Once the primitivist framework becomes clear, Gardner’s claims about historical witchcraft need only explain how the thread from the Old Stone Age comes to the present day. Where Margaret Murry’s witch cult hypothesis begins in Pagan Europe, Gardner moves the Old Religion to an even earlier time, rendering it the Oldest Religion instead. As such, the Gardnerian framework rests on two principle claims.

1. Witchcraft originates in primitive spiritual and magical practices.
2. These practices have been handed down in unbroken lineages since prehistoric times.

The second claim strains credulity unless one admits that the practices change over time, potentially so much that the members of a later generation do not recognize an older generation as the same tradition despite shared lineage. On a weak interpretation of that thesis, all human traditions stem from the practices of our primitive ancestors, continually changing, differentiating, and converging as humanity itself does. Witchcraft would then have nothing remarkable about it as all religious traditions could claim the same lineage.

A stronger interpretation of the first claim recalls the Witch Cult Hypothesis as framed by Margaret Murray, a source explicitly acknowledged by Gardner as support for his claims. Murray does not locate her Old Religion in a strictly primitive context, claiming only that witches practiced an ancient fertility cult. The Dianic rites that Murray imagined could have belonged to a Hellenistic or Celtic pagan cult centered on a goddess rendered nameless by secrecy but belonging to historical times rather than prehistory. Gardner then reaches further backward in time, possibly to bring his religion closer to something he understood more clearly, the beliefs of tribal peoples he studied and documented. In other words Gardner may have understood the first thesis as identical to a more specific claim.

1a. Witchcraft originates in spiritual and magical practices of indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia.

The conflation of indigenous peoples with prehistorical humanity generally reflects an interpretive lens generally accepted in Gardner’s time but no longer. Scholars now largely reject the framework of a single path of development from primitive conditions to modern civilization as an imperialist bias not supported by evidence. This mistaken belief does require some framework for identifying beliefs succinctly ancient to be part of the primitive witchcraft lineage. Both Murray and Gardner rely on the same additional thesis to account for knowledge about surviving and original witches.

3. The Old/Oldest Religion beliefs and rituals can be known by analysis of rural folk stories, superstitions, and rituals.

The third thesis turns out to be the most important since the epistemic status of all other conclusions rest on it. Without a reliable method to trace the secret tradition and recognize its continued presence, there is no evidence for the other claims. To the detriment of both Gardner and Murray, scholars have failed to find such support. As noted by other scholars, Murray cites customs as evidence of ancient rites without sufficient research to uncover the recency of the practice. Murray interprets her evidence based on her own understanding of rural folk traditions rather than documented evidence or self-report from the people who lived those traditions.

Contemporary folklorists generally agree that theories regarding ancient customs preserved among uneducated rural peoples align better with prejudices of the academic community than available evidence. Many of Murray’s specific claims regarding folk customs contradict available evidence. While the Witch Cult hypothesis remains well known among popular audiences, scholars have rejected it and the methods that brought it into being as unreliable. Gardner offers only one piece of evidence beyond Murray insofar as he claimed to be have been initiated by a surviving witch coven. Historians have likewise rejected Gardner’s claims about the coven as fabrications, a story to frame the founding myth of his new “old religion.” In the absence of any reliable support, Gardner’s second thesis may be safely rejected.

Only the first thesis remains plausible, but it only allows us to conclude that Wicca is connected to an authentic experience of the divine that spans the human condition. Such a thesis would be true of all modern religions, so Wicca is not distinct in that way. While one should then see Wicca as equivalent in authenticity to religious traditions with a longer historical legacy.

When I learned about the Wiccan Rule of Three, I often saw it associated with the concept of karma in Indian philosophy. For a long time I understood the two concepts to be essentially the same; the universe returns good for good and evil for evil. The implied moral theory is that one deserves to receive what they send out into the world. My teachers often used “karma” and “Rule of Three” interchangeably. While both principles orient moral judgments around actions and consequences, they differ significantly when analyzed critically.

In Wicca, “karma” is described by the “Rule of Three,” stating that whoever one sends out comes back to them threefold. The rule or its consequences are often casually referred to as “karma,” and the pagan community I found as an adolescent appeared aware of the concepts association with Asian religious traditions. For the most part, “karma” is the reason Wiccans caution one another against casting curses or working any destructive magic. Doing so would be foolish because the witch would eventually suffer three times the destructive force they had called down. Retribution may not be immediate or in kind, but Wiccans believe that the Rule of Three guarantees that no one escapes it forever.

The norm against cursing does not prevent self-righteous witches from crafting rituals to encourage karmic return for perceived wrongs. A person sufficiently convinced of their blamelessness can readily use the Rule of Three to spiritually bypass any self-reflection since it does not distinguish between correlation and causation. Vague misfortunes can be aligned with perceived failings, enabling one to embrace a more convenient penance than reforming their behavior or apologizing for their role in a conflict. The Rule’s loose framework allows a person to interpret moral consequences for themselves by disconnecting result from action, cutting moral introspection short.

Furthermore, the Rule of Three relies on a widely open timeline for karmic retribution. Karma can always come around at some undefined later point. When someone appears to be profiting from harm, one must assume the dues will be paid eventually, but evidence does not support that conclusion. The classic Problem of Evil asks how an infinitely good god could allow for evil in the world. The Rule of Three posits that harm is returned to the offender, a denial that evil is allowed in the world. When presented with manifest and continued evil in the world, a strict adherent of the Rule must assert their faith in some eventual corrective action. Nevertheless, an injustice that is corrected only after a century allows for many people to suffer injustice and never see retribution in their lifetimes.

Indian philosophy contains a diversity of views about karma, but the word means “action” or “deed” in Sanskrit. In the Buddhist tradition, karma represents a causal principle that binds a person to the consequences of their actions. A harmful act produces the harm itself as well as a number of additional effects, setting off a chain of events that may take a long time to unfold. Both the agent and the subject of an action experience emotions that can shape their responses to future events. The patterns formed by repeated actions and their effects prevent a person from achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirth. A person who breaks the pattern overcomes their karma, their desires, and their attachment to those things and become free.

The Buddhist account of karma enjoys a few structural strengths when compared to the Rule of Three. When framed as a cascade of cause and effect, karma becomes plausible if not trivially true. The Buddhist account of causation, dependent co-arising, understands causal relationships to include necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, and necessary and sufficient conditions, so some causal links may be remote but nevertheless logically connected. By definition a cause produces effects, and a single event can be described in such detail as to identify multiple causes of the event as well as multiple effects. Karma provides an acknowledgment that such consequences become part of an individual’s life history, whether they were the agent or patient of the event.

Karma provides an ethical framework for reflecting on the morality of one’s actions. When an agent sees themselves as the originator of later events, they can consider whether they are content to be of a piece with the results of their actions. Recognizing that one’s behavior does not reflect self-belief presents an agent with the opportunity bring themselves into alignment. Since the agent may also recognize themselves as the outcome of previous events, they gain the ability to discern the boundaries of their personal responsibility. As a moral norm, karma implies a value in taking responsibility for one’s actions and for forgiving oneself for circumstances beyond their control. Karma complements the Buddhist value of compassion by placing a person in the roles of both agent and patient to frame suffering as a shared experience.

Since Paganism and Buddhism are distinct religious traditions with their own origins and practices, there is no assumed need for Pagan concepts to conform with Buddhist definitions. One need not deny the influence of Buddhism on modern Paganism to claim that the Pagan tradition has nevertheless developed its own interpretations of shared concepts, a branch from the same root. While there is no need for Paganism to be consistent with Buddhist doctrines, analysis of the Rule of Three reveals fatal internal incoherence. The Problem of Evil raises a foundational plausibility question that the Rule has no means to address. Furthermore, the Rule of Three lacks any account of value so that one can discern good from evil. While karma also lacks such an account, it does not need one since its framework does not invoke any notion of good or evil. Desirable and undesirable consequences are relative to the agent’s desires, not to an absolute moral law. Morals derived from karmic introspection do assume valuing compassion and disvaluing suffering, and Buddhist philosophy provides accounts of those values and their relationship to karma.

As a witch I believe that I should consider the consequences of my actions both magical and mundane. Recognizing suffering as an ill, I believe that I should avoid causing it and rectify it where I am able. To fulfill these duties effectively, I need to understand the scope of my ability to influence events directly and indirectly. The Rule of Three leaves too many of these questions open to interpretation and cannot account for its own plausibility. The Buddhist account of karma fulfills these needs and withstands critical analysis. As such, I prefer to adopt the more robust view of karma even though it distances me from a core Wiccan tradition.

The demand for more rigorous proof marked a turning point in my spiritual practice. Like most teenagers who discovered contemporary paganism through books, I had little means to differentiate reliable sources from fabrication. Teachers and elders in the craft sometimes corrected inaccuracies, but the information they supplied often turned out to lack any more robust grounding. I set aside my practice for a while because I could find no truth to support it.

As a young Wiccan, I learned about karma, reincarnation, and chakras. While I knew that those ideas originated in Indian philosophy, I read only shallowly in Buddhist and Brahmanic sources. My understanding was shaped by the Pagans around me and the books I read. High school history classes brushed these subjects broadly in order to encapsulate a deep literary tradition in a few sentences, so I had no more reliable source available.

At university, I took courses on religions in Asia and philosophy of mind. My professors assigned yoga sutras and sermons of the Buddha. I began practicing meditation again, this time under the direction of classical Zen teachings. As a graduate student, I served as teaching assistant for a class on Indian philosophy. The professor was scholar, linguist, and storyteller. He asked his students to read primary sources, and in class he decoded them, ornamenting them in history, vocabulary, literary style, and philosophical argument. While he was not a member of the philosophy department, I learned more from him than any academic philosopher.

Karma and reincarnation all appeared in his lectures. They sat among dissections of Buddhist logic and Vedantana phenomenology. Yet they appeared very differently than they did in the Wiccan books where I first encountered them. My studies into the occult resumed so that I could trace the concepts back from Wicca to their introduction by Theosophy and embrace by the Golden Dawn. With the rise of more generic New Age thought, the meaning had twisted into reflections of Christian retribution and transmigration of the soul.

The concepts as understood by their original traditions contain much more robust philosophical foundations. As a cause and effect framework, karma calls attention to the myriad consequences of our actions and how those consequences follow us until the chain of causation is exhausted. When embedded into Brahmanic or Buddhist metaphysics, rebirth describes little more than the Law of Conservation of Matter. Wicca had appropriated these concepts and wove brittle shells of themselves into its core metaphysics. From that perspective, I saw Wicca as foolish because the tradition anchored itself on mistaken interpretations that cannot withstand critical analysis. They did not note the weakness in their views and seek to repair it.

The religious traditions I learned from the cradle had clear chains of authority. Evangelical Baptists point to the literal words of the Bible, but individual congregants tend to defer to their pastor who in turn references the received view of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Roman Catholic Church codifies its doctrines and the processes by which those doctrines are altered. While authority can be confining when one disagrees, it provides certainty about the boundaries of theology. Paganism, and occult traditions in general, lack any doctrinal authority, so the theology remains unbounded. Beyond common anchors in the practice of ritual magic, polytheism, and animism, internal metaphysics can run wild.

With a heavy emphasis on introspection and mysticism, personal gnosis plays a prominent role in Pagan spirituality. The gnosis drawn from a visionary experience or deep meditation may provide a guiding light for one’s practice and core beliefs. William James discusses the power of such insights in The Varieties of Religious Experience. According to James, mystical experiences form the foundation of religious traditions as insights become codified in doctrine and ritual. Since the experience can be so powerful, James allows that the mystic has every reason to believe the content of their own insight and apply the lessons they draw from it.

However, the same cannot be said for those people who have not had the same experience. Altered states of consciousness can be described, but one must experience them to have a complete understanding. Instead, one must judge the mystic’s message by the observable outcomes that arise from it. The content of the insight cannot impose any justification to believe absent directly sharing the experience. An insight so profound that it cannot be expressed in words cannot be readily transferred to someone else. As such, the mystic can spread their message and demonstrate the good it has done for them, but every other individual may decide to accept or reject that message based on their own experience and observations.

In the Pagan community I encountered, knowledge was learned through books and personal gnosis, often shared through word of mouth. Covens and circles of fellow travelers engaged in a dialogic exercise around asserting personal gnosis and collectively reframing it to harmonize everyone’s paradigm. The resulting consensus usually degrades over time as individuals have new experiences or read new books or pick up ideas from new people. Critical analysis did not have a significant place in this exercise. Rejections were discouraged as intolerant or narrow-minded, so only modifications and reframing were permitted. As a result the Pagan theology I learned from my teachers consisted of ad hoc metaphors threaded with inconsistent principles.

In time, epistemology helped me sort the substance from the fluff. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, what it is, and how we get it. Classical epistemologists defined knowledge as beliefs that are both true and justified. While there are many views among epistemologists and metaphysicians on what makes a belief “true” or “justified”, a belief that lacks either direct sensory evidence or other robust indicator of truth will not pass muster. Many grandiose claims about “energy” with regard to working magic fall flat when the believer is asked “How do you know that?” With that perspective I began to reason about Pagan concepts and my own experiences. In the process I rejected many of the specific beliefs and practices I learned as an initiate, making it difficult to engage with the Pagan community for a long time.

Scholarly study and critical inquiry became important boundaries for my spiritual journey. Buddhist philosophy became a more prominent influence on my daily practice although Pagan imagery continued to provide metaphors and structure for ritual magic. I read more widely in the occult, especially authors that my Pagan elders discouraged. Many streams of influence have fed my curiosity and informed my practice, but no single framework pulls all of them into view. These entries are helping me build that framework as my studies continue.

A few of the upcoming entries might contain heavy criticism of Neo-Paganism and the associated community, and I want to provide some perspective before publishing. Wicca as taught by Llewellyn publications from the 1990s provided a refuge from evangelical Christianity. Before high school I lost my faith in Christianity due to close study of the Bible. I plowed through it from the Old Testament to the New, and I found the contradictions and puzzles that most people encounter when they study it closely. As the text, the morality the church taught, and my own feelings could not hang together, I began to look for alternative perspectives.

When I found Neo-Paganism, I thought I found a more humble faith that nevertheless remained true to humanity’s most ancient approaches to divinity. Introspection, tolerance, and embrace of the natural world wrapped my strongest intuitions about spirituality. The practice of magic and ritual gave me a sense of control over my life, something I felt sorely lacking. Neo-Paganism felt right for me, and it also felt true, a more open but also more accurate description of the world than Christian Heaven and Hell.

Since I loved being a Neo-Pagan and a witch, I wanted to learn everything I could. I read everything I could find on mythology, folklore, and Wiccan traditions. I sought out teachers and elders in the Pagan community. My ancestry contains both Celtic and Germanic roots, so I studied Irish and Norse mythology as well as the relevant Wiccan traditions. As my studies took me into history and archeology, I found contradictions with common Pagan teachings. My teachers and elders gave deeply unsatisfying answers to the questions I posed. Evidence routinely supported academic findings and cast doubt on what I learned from Neo-Pagan sources.

After I lost trust in my teachers, I severed my connections with the Pagan community that embraced me. I let friends who practiced Wicca drift away so that I could avoid metaphysical discussions and subsequent arguments. Eventually, my occult studies resumed without teachers or community. My reading ventured into subjects my mentor had discouraged, often with an aura of fear. Mystical traditions offered something I sought in witchcraft, so I studied Daoist, Yogic, and Buddhist philosophy.

As my practice developed, some Pagan concepts persisted. Despite the wisdom of Zen teachers, I remained interested in Siddhis, the psychic powers accessible in elevated states of consciousness. My ethics retained the emphasis on integrity of behavior and the duties of honor I associated with Norse tradition paganism. No matter how many dharma talks I attended or meditation groups I visited, I did not feel the same sense of belonging as I did in the ritual circle.
Returning to witchcraft after years of solitary, unstructured practice helped me begin healing both old and recent traumas and emerge from deep depression. I began with a review what I learned from my teachers and misleading sources, finding the important threads and discarding the dross. The entries on Neo-Pagan topics here represent the continuation of that study. My intention is to break down the brittle ideas and construct something stronger, a place where I can belong as a witch and a scholar. When I criticize Neo-Paganism, I am trying to refine my understanding and construct a more robust foundation that embraces my all elements of my practice.

Delta Paganism advises seekers to take only what is freely given, so it must supply some way to make that judgment. The motivation for this principle is avoiding cultural appropriation, specifically colonizer cultures adopting elements of colonized cultures to augment their spiritual practice. Cultural exchange benefits individuals and communities by creating ways for people to learn about one another and interact in a shared space. Cultural appropriation lacks equality between participants, removing the mutual respect required for shared understanding. The Delta Pagan’s journey should not be an expedition to plunder the wonders of the world’s traditions. Instead, the journey should be characterized by authentic study and respectful exchange.

Some religious traditions frame experience of the divine within a very specific location and environment. The tradition changes over time, both organically and through cultural exchange, but connection with the rhythms of a specific place remain a prominent feature. Rituals and regular observances may be impossible to conduct outside of the tradition’s home region. Where the religious experience attaches to holy sites or local seasonal cycles, adherents may have difficulty traveling with their faith. A person who moves to a region where such a tradition thrives may take a long time to become folded into the religion, if they ever do. Usually, an adherent is born into a regional tradition and passes through rites of passage to mark life transitions.

Some religious traditions value spreading their doctrines to others and bringing new adherents into the fold. When they thrive, these traditions tend to take root well beyond their original location, carried by missionaries. Initiation rituals welcome new members into the community whether they are born or converted to it. Converts tend to incorporate core doctrines into local practices, introducing new ideas into the tradition. A missionary tradition then becomes a nexus of core doctrines, internal developments, and syncretism.

Mystery traditions keep their doctrines and rituals secret, only selectively admitting candidates. An aspiring member often must study or undergo a ritualized ordeal before being formally initiated into the religion. Rituals of initiation form a common thread with regional, missionary, and mystery religions. Regional religions may have rites of passage to mark stages of life but no formal ritual to initiate new members. Missionary religions typically have a formal initiation ritual, and they may develop or incorporate rites of passage from regional religions. The former assumes that new members enter only through birth, but the latter allows that new members may join as adults. Initiation rites form a centerpiece of a mystery tradition as it serves as a boundary between those allowed to know and those who are kept ignorant.

A spiritual journey might wind through traditions that belong to all of these categories, and the seeker cannot help but be influenced by what they encounter. At the same time, every seeker exists in relation to their history, in particular their ancestral relationship to imperialism and colonization. Members of privileged classes and colonizer cultures should consider the historical relationship between themselves and the traditions they study. White people who study Buddhism should be aware of the “Orientalization” that characterized the original popularization of Buddhism in Europe and North America. While Missionary traditions invite exchange, regional traditions with a history of suppression by colonizers might find syncretism disrespectful. Without developing strong personal ties by growing up in the area or spending a significant phase of life there, one may not think of regional traditions as being freely given.

Colonizer cultures cannot demand the same respect for their traditions because they have made an active effort to export their culture and force colonized people to conform to it. An individual dislocated from their culture’s original home and isolated from their traditions will adopt what they are given and make it their own. When colonizer cultures erase the traditions of colonized people, those descendants will necessarily inherit the colonizer’s traditions. Even though a living individual may not have participated in any historical atrocities, they benefit from that history and enjoy a position built on that violence. While no one person can correct past injustices, one can and should avoid reproducing colonization dynamics when studying or interacting with cultural tradition that are not one’s own. Nothing that a colonizer has taken is freely given.